Publications
Mastery: Why Deeper Learning Is Essential in an Age of Distraction
By Tony Wagner and Ulrik Juul Christensen
Chapter 3, "Mastery Learning in K–8," features Red Bridge Education as a case study in mastery-based, agency-driven learning. Authors Tony Wagner and Ulrik Juul Christensen document Red Bridge Education's learning model, including its Autonomy Level framework, mastery credit system, and approach to student-initiated advancement, and describe the school's ongoing work designing and refining new assessment systems.
“Everything at Red Bridge is thoughtfully constructed to develop humans who can thrive in this moment and future times of rapid change."
"She also wanted to build a school model that was replicable, rather than a one-and-done school that served a limited number of students."
"Throughout this journey, they have also been documenting their methods and sharing them with other schools, including public schools."
"They're doing R&D for new assessment systems.”
– Wagner & Christensen, Mastery (2025), Chapter 3
Tomorrow Schools: Education's Next Chapter Is Already Being Written
By R. Villarreal Halprin, & A. Mago
Tomorrow Schools is a publication produced by researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education through the course "Why Innovations in Education Fail and How They Can Succeed," taught by Michael Horn, co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute. The authors traveled across the United States to identify and document seven emerging school models operating as genuine alternatives to the traditional educational system.
Red Bridge Education was selected as one of seven schools nationally identified as fundamentally rethinking the purpose and design of school. The chapter on Red Bridge Education traces the founding vision, the development of the Autonomy Level framework and mastery credit system, and the school's approach to building student agency as an organizing principle rather than an add-on.
“By 2018... she was guided by the question: what if agency weren't just a feature of a few practices, but the organizing principle of the entire school?"
"She took a year to start from first principles: If agency were the goal, how would you rebuild school from the ground up?"
"In 2020, Friedman opened Red Bridge School... as a small but ambitious demonstration site for that vision.”
–Villarreal Halprin & Mago, Tomorrow Schools (April 2026)
Why I Believe We Need to Redesign Schools Around Decision-Making
Nikita Khetan argues that schools should be redesigned around giving students authentic, repeated opportunities to practice decision-making in their learning in order to build agency, self-awareness, and stronger ownership of their education.
What I’ve Learned About Building Citizens, Not Just Students
Nikita Khetan shares that schools should intentionally focus on building students as engaged citizens by prioritizing social-emotional learning, relationship skills, and structured opportunities to practice empathy, collaboration, and responsible participation in community life.
I Was an ‘A Student’ — Until I Realized Grades Don’t Measure Learning
Nikita Khetan reflects that being an A student masked how little grades actually measured real learning, and that true understanding comes from deeper engagement, feedback, and growth beyond traditional grading systems.
Measure Education Inputs, Too
Orly Friedman shares why she thinks schools should be evaluated and improved by measuring not only student outcomes but also the key educational inputs and conditions that shape learning, so that schools function as continuous learning organizations focused on improving practice rather than just tracking results.
What Does Personalized Learning Actually Mean? It Depends Who You Ask
Orly Friedman explains that “personalized learning” means different things to different people, and that the term is often used inconsistently to describe a wide range of practices, tools, and school models rather than a single clear approach.
Transcend: Early Agency Model, Inspired by Red Bridge Practices & Curriculum
Like many districts across the country, Lindsay Unified School District (LUSD) has a broad set of transferable skills (Lifelong Learning Standards) that they seek to cultivate in learners to support individual and collective thriving. Since 2007, LUSD has been making progress toward these skills through their strategic design. Given these strategic priorities, LUSD has focused on finding systematic supports and practices they can embed in their existing learning model to enable learners to master these Lifelong Learning Standards more authentically, have more ownership over learning, and begin growing agency earlier in their development.
In SY 2021–2022, LUSD joined the Early Agency Collaborative, where LUSD leaders convened with other forward-thinking systems to design toward agency in early grades. Through this collaborative, LUSD leaders visited Red Bridge, a nonprofit independent school in San Francisco, and were deeply inspired by their Work Habits Curriculum and agentic practices for purposefully growing transferable skills. What emerged was a partnership between Lindsay and Red Bridge to adapt a work habits curriculum and agentic practices to the Lindsay context.
Over the course of spring 2022 and SY 2022–2023, Lindsay, with the support of Transcend, piloted a range of agentic practices inspired by Red Bridge to (1) foster a culture of innovation to sustain the work long term, and (2) deepen understanding of what works well in the Lindsay context. Learning facilitators (how Lindsay refers to teachers) first piloted goal-setting structures and Red Bridge mini-lessons around goals. Then, Lindsay piloted a host of agentic practices that stitched together and adapted learner experiences from Red Bridge (e.g., Red Bridge Habits Mini-Lessons, Deliberate Practice in math) and the Whole Child Model (e.g., Strong Start and Strong Close) to meet the varied needs of their learner population. What helped enable this process were the strong instructional practices that were already in place in LUSD to support agentic development. These conditions enabled LUSD to drive this work forward through strategic adjustments to their practice.
This model is the product of this collaboration, shaped by insights from implementing and spreading it within the Lindsay context since SY 2021–2022. Read on to learn more about the model and to see if it might be the right fit for your community!